Content : Introduction /Cindy Weinstein --Stowe and race /Samuel Otter --Uncle Tom's Cabin and the south /Cindy Weinstein --Uncle Tom's Cabin and the American Renaissance: the sacramental aesthetic of Harriet Beecher Stowe /Michael T. Gilmore --Reading and children: Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Pearl of Orr's Island /Gillian Brown --Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe in England /Audrey Fisch --Staging black insurrection: Dred on stage /Judie Newman --Stowe and regionalism /Marjorie Pryse --Stowe and the law /Gregg Crane --Harriet Beecher Stowe and the American reform tradition /Ronald G. Walters --Harriet Beecher Stowe and the dream of the great American novel /Lawrence Buell --Stowe and the literature of social change /Carolyn L. Karcher --The afterlife of Uncle Tom's Cabin /Kenneth W. Warren. The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe establishes new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Beecher Stowe's writing and life. This collection of specially commissioned essays provides new perspectives on the frequently read classic Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Stowe's representation of race, her attitude to reform, and her relationship to the American novel. The volume investigates Stowe's impact on the American literary tradition and the novel of social change. Contributions also offer lucid and provocative readings that analyze Stowe's writings through a variety of contexts, including antebellum reform, regionalism, law and the protest novel. Fresh, accessible, and engaged, this is the most up to date introduction available to Stowe's work.